Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. Our castaway started work in the film industry, retired at the age of 42, and commenced a new career as a novelist.

He became an international bestseller with a Manchurian candidate,

and since then has written a further 22 successful works.

He was most described as a tender-hearted cynic,

a manic depressive optimist, an entertainer

who nonetheless makes you wake up in the early hours

in a sweat of fear.

Here's Richard Condon.

Richard, do you think you might look forward to an exile on a Desert Island?

Oh indeed, yes.

We lived overseas for 27 years, I say overseas from New York, which was where we started from, and

suddenly I got a perspective on my own country, just from being away from it for months and months at a time.

And I think to be on a desert island that same kind of

objectivity would return to me.

I say return because now we live in Dallas.

But what do I wonder being a novelist, would the isolation equal inspiration for you?

No, I don't believe in inspiration. It's really a motor habit. It's something that you do every day of your life. Now I work about 7.5 hours a day and I do that 7 days a week so that after 29 years if I'm not writing at the time of day when I

usually am writing I become very restive and very nervous and the fact of inspiration my gosh I don't think you'd be able to pay the

grocer if you if you relied on inspiration.

Well now on you Desad Allen the only company you've got are these eight records.

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